


Fisher King

by cognomen



Category: Hannibal (TV), King Arthur (2004)
Genre: Arthurian legend - Freeform, Blood, Gen, shortform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-23 15:06:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3772774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Will Graham dreams in dark images, dripping blood, and black skies. He dreams of the stream running red. He sits on the dock as he had once with his father and his mind accepts the wooden planks beneath him, accepts the rod in his hands and the pain in his thighs.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Will Graham dreams of the grail. Study. Shortform.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fisher King

Will Graham dreams in dark images, dripping blood, and black skies. He dreams of the stream running red. He sits on the dock as he had once with his father and his mind accepts the wooden planks beneath him, accepts the rod in his hands and the pain in his thighs. He is split, a wide, bleeding arc that curves up from behind one knee and leaves his groin a wreckage. It spills blood in slow, tidal waves before it lands in a jagged line at the other knee. 

He baits the water with his own blood and pulls the hook up empty, empty, _empty_. In dream logic, he knows that each fish he fails to catch from this bloody river is another death. Somewhere a pan is filled sizzling with a liver or a heart and still he bleeds into the stream and catches nothing. 

Will dreams of a land starving, of people hungry, life ebbing from them like every pulse of blood that crawls lethargic now over the dock into the empty waters. He cannot catch the fish, that is his sin, cannot feed the people before they become fed upon themselves.

Will is patient with his unbitten hook, with the slack line. He is too exhausted, too wounded to fight in any other manner.

On the red waters comes a boat. On the boat, men.

The knights have never come in boats on Will's stream before, and in the instant his cork bobber brushes up against the wooden side of the ship, Will knows the men inside have come, righteous and sworn and true, as many before them had. They are here to seek the grail, to heal his wounds.

They are sternfaced and winblown, and they are two. They wear familiar faces, one quiet and dark eyed, dirty. He is the opposite of Hannibal, but his face is the same save for two dashed marks in blue over his cheekbones.

The other is himself, younger, brighter eyed, chin lifted in pride. He is unweighted by sin, and when he steps into the bloody shallows he comes out unstained. He bears a white shield with a red cross as bold as the blood of Christ.

Behind him, the other knight steps heavy, injured. He has lost his shield, his helmet is battered, tucked beneath one arm. He, too, bleeds.

"Are you the king?" the voice is gruff, but known to Will.

In his dream, he is. He is the dying king of a dying land, ever thirsty, sustained by sips from a magic cup. Each night he dies a little, each day one sip of wine to become his blood to bleed into the river.

Will lifts himself laboriously to his feet, casting down his rod. They have come for the grail - or, the white knight has. They all do, they _always_ do. He limps into the castle, slow agony.

It is a great, vast space, wide halls and high ceilings. Windows pour sad, soft light into the mirthless place, and the silence dusts behind them, swallowing up their footsteps. 

Will's throne is black with blood, dried in flaking layers, and bare of cushion. He is the last who will ever sit on it, failing as he is. His wounds are payments, the cuts deeper for every failure. 

They had started with Garret Jacob Hobbs.

"Wait," Will tells his guests, and wait they do.

In his dream, the procession comes slow. A bier, upon which a body is folded, a bloody spear, born by white ghosts aloft, and last the grail. It is not magnificent, not jeweled or shining. Black, black, black, and crested with horns woven round and loosely so it could only hold a sip at a time. To drink was a threat to the eyes, to cut the cheeks and lips and pay in blood for the wine.

He will be glad to surrender it to the past, to hand it to the boy with eyes like his own ten years ago, let him christen the virgin white of his shield with drops of his own blood.

Let him see how long he could wield the grail before he, too, bled. His eyes may look beyond the world, but they do not miss his own companion. He has come damaged by the quest, to lift the cross knight high. He does not yet know mortality, how can this young knight know temptation?

The cup does not resist the white knight’s touch, and he lifts it very carefully, trying not to spill. He does not drink first, but holds it for his injured companion.

Will Graham closes his eyes. The sound of water surrounds him and he does not want to open his eyes again. Red branches bloom behind his eyelids, splitting and splitting and he wakes without a desire to see the Grail again, even when his scarred face aches and stretches painfully.

It is not wine but whiskey he reaches for.

-

**Author's Note:**

> -Beta'd by the ever enduring Quedarius (http://archiveofourown.org/users/Quedarius/pseuds/Quedarius).


End file.
